5 Lessons from Hitting Rock Bottom

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Eduardo IzquierdoWhen we can no longer change a situation,
we are challenged to change ourselves.~Viktor Frankl

When you try to hinder the growth process, life has a way of making things very uncomfortable for you.

I learned this because I was extremely uncomfortable in my skin, in my mind, in my physical world for a while before the temporary realities of my life came crashing down around me – in a huge way.

Before I was forced to make a series of big changes, I had resigned myself to this idea that I would just have to muscle through the hardships, that I would need to exert all of my energy into holding on or things wouldn’t turn out the way they were supposed to.

I was exhausted, but I believed that this was just a period of my life where I would need to swim upstream.

The reality was that the universe was stripping me of the things I thought I needed, the person I thought I was, the lifestyle I thought was best for me. At the time it seemed cruel.

Now it feels like a beautiful, empowering process.

Yesterday, as I thought about how I would celebrate my upcoming birthday, I suddenly had the realization that my 25th year had been both the best and worst periods of my life.

I had six solid months of heartache – a horrendously sad breakup, a struggle to find a better job, a brief stint living back home – followed by six months of a happiness I never thought was possible – an amazing new job, a place of my own, and a startlingly bright light at the end of the tunnel.

So what happened in the middle?

I laid back, turned my feet downstream, and allowed life to carry me to where I needed to go. I surrendered because I had nothing else to lose and everything to gain.

Here are the important lessons I’ve learned along the way.

1. Stripping things bare creates a world of possibilities.

I recently came across this quote, and wanted to plaster it all over my house: “When nothing is sure, everything is possible.”

Looking back now, my life hadn’t been easy for a significant amount of time. I was shutting doors that were opening for me because I didn’t trust that they fit into my bigger picture. I needed to interfere because I didn’t fully trust in life’s ability to iron out the kinks, and create a path of least resistance.

Without attachments – without much of anything, really – the possibilities were literally endless. It was terrifying but thrilling at the same time.

2. No matter how big the storm, the dust always settles.

I recently revisited the wounds that I had been carrying for months, and I found that they had healed. The scars remain — reminders of what was and what would never be — but they are now something I observe, not something I feel at my core.

They had healed because I cried and threw things and didn’t get out of bed for days at a time. They had healed because I had surrendered to the process, allowing new experiences in and expelling painful memories out.

When I look back, I can see that every other major heartache I’ve felt throughout my life has also healed – they always do.

3. There’s a bigger picture that we don’t have to see.

When I was deep in the trenches of my misery, I begged for just a glimpse of what might come of all of this – a dream about where I might end up, an inner knowing that there was a purpose to all of it.

The truth was, the knowing already existed within me, and any glimpse into the future would have halted my growth. I needed to work with what I was given, molding the muck into something that I could at least honor and recognize as a stepping-stone.

I don’t need to know what is going to happen next in order to feel like everything will be ok.

More importantly, if you are willing to tap into it and trust that you will always know when to adjust your course, things will undoubtedly begin to slip into place as if the resistance never existed at all.

If you quiet your intuition, life goes back to making things uncomfortable. It’s not a punishment, it’s a prodding. When things are uncomfortable, we are forced to shift – my shift just happened to be a major one.

5. Painful processes pave the way for a smoother path in the future.

Walking through intense heartache and reaching the other side is generally something we don’t forget. But maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

If I’m ever faced with a situation of this magnitude again – which is entirely possible – I don’t believe that it will have quite the devastating impact as it did this time. Because I now also have the memory of the deep joy I felt after working through it.

I know that there is another side because I’ve seen it and believe in my ability to get there – and I choose to hold on to that memory.

~~

Out of grief I’ve found my silver lining. And at this point, that’s all that matters.

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6 thoughts on 5 Lessons from Hitting Rock Bottom

Thank You so much for this article. Sometimes we need to be reminded of something we already know. This post is doing that for me. I am struggling with trying to look into the future. I want to KNOW that I am on the right path. I keep pushing to make sure I’m not ‘wasting my time’, forgetting that there is no such thing as ‘wasted time’. Everything is a learning experience to be appreciated.

I am reminded of something I posted on facebook:
“With the right attitude, every path is the right one.”

Kayla, this is a wonderful article and it is the perfect answer, at the right time, to a question I asked earlier today. I too have gone through exactly what you have. Heartache, uncertainty, looking for a better job or career move, the need for control and ultimately surrendering. I asked why it took this long for me to reach the point I have reached today and become the person I have become. After a devastating break-up, I didn’t allow the path to show itself. I kept resisting and resisting and even trying to force things into place. But a massive prodding sent me miles away from where I was in terms of where I was living, and I was given my own new space to grow and concede to forces beyond my control. Had I not surrendered, had I not learned from the process of heart-ache and personal growth as it is meant to be, I wouldn’t be the stronger, kinder and more compassionate woman I am today.

Out of naivety, arrogance and control, events took me through an evolution to the person I am today. Why did it take this long? The other answer I gave myself was because it was meant to be. We are meant to become a certain way, we are meant to mould ourselves to change, for the future ahead, even though we don’t know what that future may hold for us.

This is an excellent reminder of the fact that we don’t always know where our life is going. We’re along for the ride, and I’ve found that the more I get out of the way, and the more I stop trying to control things, the better they go.

I felt this way when I was at my lowest. It was a week after a bad breakup, my friends stopped talking to me of their own free will. I had just started my senior year and was a month in when I started having severe pain in my lower abdomen. Turned out to be a ruptured ovary and that I was in the early stages of ovarian cancer. I needed emergency surgery and four days after I left the hospital I needed to go back because I ended up having an infection. My mum was the only one who was with me through it, and I’ll love her always for that. I had no friends to talk to for comfort and my ex wanted me to hurt like he had. I cried every night I was alone in the hospital. I lost a total of 30 lbs in a month because I couldn’t eat, whatever I ate, it came back up. It took me the rest of the first school semester to try and make things right.

Now I’m with someone who treats me right, I have a job, and going to college. It only takes time and the right of mind to get back up and do it :)